Black Friday burnout: How AI can cut through the noise and deliver real value to customers

Black Friday tells a twofold story: customers are overwhelmed by endless offers, while brands struggle to stand out amid a flood of promotional material. At the same time, marketers face the annual challenge of cutting through the noise, as rising competition and message fatigue make engagement more difficult to achieve. The result leads to ‘Black Friday burnout’ - a cycle of exhaustion for both brands and customers alike.

The assumption is that success requires new campaigns, offering heavier discounts, or increasing marketing output. In reality, there’s a smarter and more sustainable approach. AI-powered automation allows marketers to use customer data to deliver communications that are precise, timely, and relevant, restoring the human touch to digital engagement at scale.

The desire to personalise communications is not in question. In the run up to this year’s Black Friday, new research has shown that 99% of marketers see it as vital to eCommerce success. Yet the research also echoes a broader challenge. AI has never been more capable in delivering, but many marketers still underutilise or misunderstand the tools they have: more than a quarter (27%) admit struggling to personalise offers during Black Friday.

So, marketers now need to move beyond using AI simply to optimise campaigns and instead leverage it to truly understand customers - using data-driven insight to anticipate needs, respond to shifting behaviour, and turn seasonal attention into lasting engagement.

Personalisation is everywhere

Personalisation has become ingrained into our collective consumer consciousness. The range of applications we use on a daily basis, whether that’s Spotify, Netflix or Instagram, all tailor their recommendations to our individual tastes. If they didn’t contain elements of personalisation, we would most likely use them less. Throw in the fact AI is now providing us with instant and highly-relevant answers, and it’s clear that as a society we are now relying on personalisation.

The same expectation is tied into online shopping and eCommerce experiences. Amid the Black Friday rush, consumers will be on the lookout for personalised offers they can latch onto quickly. When interacting with a brand’s website or receiving communications from them (email, WhatsApp, SMS etc), they will anticipate these to be relevant and tailored towards their preferences. Quite simply, it could make the difference between landing conversions or falling by the wayside. It’s why rapidly evolving consumer behaviour is reshaping engagement strategies.

Mind the execution gap

Clearly, there’s a gap between understanding personalisation’s importance and practically implementing it. The reasons for this seem to lie in execution. Nearly half (47%) of marketers said they were “just about coping” with their current workload - this implies that automation, speed and real-time decision-making can be key obstacles to success in intense and pressurised retail periods.

But this doesn’t need to be the case. The reality is that it’s never been cheaper or easier to personalise at scale. The latest AI-powered customer engagement platforms are easy to adopt and can integrate with core marketing applications like CRM or social media to create a real-time hub of customer data. Whether it’s building a data-driven visualisation of the customer journey or powering interactive chatbots, they provide an array of tools that help marketers pinpoint timely and relevant communications for every customer.

For instance, by deeply understanding a customer’s profile and their journey - think where a person works, their demographic, their lifetime journey on a website page - marketers can adapt their communications in line with these interactions. Then, by evaluating metrics such as what products a customer has viewed and for how long, AI can suggest product recommendations to push through to customers in real time. These can be used across communication channels and touchpoints to create a connected experience that maximises impact.

If a customer views a t-shirt online, for example, a web push notification could flag that ‘Black Friday deals are not over yet’, accompanied by an email that provides product recommendations related to the t-shirt or discounts tailored to that individual customer. True one-to-one personalisation can then be achieved by using AI chatbots to answer specific questions from customers in a similar way to ChatGPT.

Unlocking value for Black Friday and beyond

Insights from our 2024 Black Friday analysis showed that the most effective brands used AI to anticipate customer preferences. Personalised campaigns saw engagement rise by 19%, while dynamic product recommendations increased interactions by 16% and raised average order values by 11%. The analysis also revealed new behavioural trends, with peak engagement occurring earlier in the day - insights that can make the difference in such a competitive market.

Black Friday is a crucial event, but it’s also a one-off. The long-term vision has to be understanding how meaningful, AI-driven communication can strengthen customer loyalty beyond the holiday period. The online space is full of noise and endless choice. Personalisation is fundamental to cutting through this noise, attracting quality leads, and giving customers clarity in their decision-making.

Those who use AI automation for Black Friday will break the burnout cycle and reap the rewards. But embedding personalisation into day-to-day operations is how marketers can deliver real long-term value for both their business and customers.

‍